I am talking about the annual sales revenue generated by Vodka, Scotch, Whiskey, Burbon, Cognac, Gin & other adult spirits in the United State of America, that also lines the state government coffers with tax revenue. Worldwide sales of alcohol containing beverages amounts to over $1 trillion USD2022 eq.
Happy New Year's Day 2022
"Thinking About It; Aaron Schwarz edition readers!
The U.S. Surgeon General warns that drinking beer, wine or spirts impairs your ability to drive or operate machinery & that it can cause health problems; that a pregnant woman should not consume alcohol because it can cause birth defects known as fetal alcohol syndrome.
I had a light hangover this morning from drinking three 12 fl. oz cans of different flavors of IPA from Deschutes Brewery in Bend Oregon, that I purchased in a mixed flavor pack at Safeway / in part to celebrate the last day of 2021, last night while watching Jeopardy the fact bowl knowledge game show hosted by Ken Jennings where a transgender woman, Amy Schneider on a winning streak earning more than $800,000 USD & still going strong!
Consuming ethanol can cause brain damage in this context, so drink to be merry & consider moderation & balanced self-control to limit your servings & how often you drink alcohol. In all seriousness, the SAD or standard American diet probably causes more preventable disease, rising healthcare costs, harm, pain, suffering & death than ethanol consumption & sadly this industrialized western diet of ultra-processed junk & semi-edible or quasi-foods being exported to other countries worldwide, where it has similar deleterious effects on the health of the local human population.
Hangover Science Facts
1. Ethanol a diuretic, meaning it increases production of urine & thus water expulsion from your body
This human body dehydrating effect of ethanol consumption part of what causes a hangover
2. Ethanol metabolism in the liver by interaction with dehydrogenase enzyme produces a lightly carcinogenic cellular irritant called acetaldehyde, which builds up in the body to create a hangover
3. Congeners, things formed during yeast fermentation of sugars & starches, ethanol solvent extract wood components from wood barrels & other flavors & additives, including sugars, increase metabolite processing in the kidneys & liver that block or compete with ethanol metabolism, slowing down the problems happening in issue 2. mentioned previously.
4. Dehydration already an epidemic because people do not consume enough water daily, so adding caffeine & alcohol to the diet can exacerbate or make the dehydration worse.
5. While small doses of ethanol are a euphoria inducing stimulant, higher doses make for depressing effects that suppress mental executive function, inhibiting or making worse balance & coordination of the body's arms & legs, causing walking gate problems, falling over, tripping & losing balance issues.
6. Ethanol at higher doses promotes poor quality sleep. While you might pass out easily & fall asleep from being drug or intoxicated from higher doses of alcohol, consuming larger amounts of ethanol degrades your sleep architecture, making choppy less restoring, less restful, tossing & turning & waking up to pee in the middle of the night repeatedly, feeling sick from hangover & lack of sleeping that can leave you feeling sluggish, grumpy, tired, sore, painful, & feeling gloomy & poor the next day.
7. Some medications taken for health problems can interact with ethanol & produce toxic intermediate side reaction products that have additional side effects that are negative or not enjoyable, also able to exacerbate dehydration or metabolic clearance of ethanol or its metabolites, possibly making a hangover much worse.
Enjoy the same Modern Marvels Episode about Spirits
https://youtu.be/5_zfP1QRbf0
An ancient technology, distillation when alcohol formed from sugars from fruits or grains eaten by yeast cells that pee out ethanol & fart out CO2 gas. When this mixture done fermenting, the organic mass & yeast are removed & the wort added to a pot still, ceramic or copper. Heat energy from combustion of wood, coal, natural gas or more recently from electric heating coils, provides the distillation heating energy to vaporize ethanol out of the weak ethanol concentration wort fluids. This distillation thereby concentrates ethanol in the distillate output of spirits.
Vodka is repeatedly distilled to produce very clean ethanol water mixture virtually free of other impurities or flavors, as a neutral spirit. White rum is similar & used to make the popular mojito, my favorite mixed drink, made with sugar or simple syrup into which mint leaves are bruised to open up some veins to release flavor essence, into which lime juice added, then superior white rum as the base, then added some water ice, topped with soda water & then a nice sprig of mint leaves to garnish!
In antiquity, bacteria in water caused illness & monks figured out that boiling during mash brewing to make beer & wine & then further distillation of wine into spirits produce safer drinks. For centuries the science of distillation stayed the same.
Yeast converts sugars into ethyl alcohol, that when heated vaporizes & forms a colorless odorless neutral grain spirit that evaporates & condenses in the distillation setup. Distilled spirits have been around since around 3000 bc in the forms of rice wine boiled in terracotta stills & converted to rice alcohol.
Unsanitary water was sanitized by pouring spirits into the water to low concentrations around 3% ABV. Colonists to the USA made spirits from pears, peaches & cherries, later apples & plumbs, to make the then popular Applejack. Though later, rum became America's spirit of choice.
When Columbus brought sugar cane to south America on his second voyage in 1494, plating it on the island of Hispaniola (today called Hati & the Dominican Republic) after which it was widely cultivated & grew to become a source of sugars for yeast fermentation & thus rum production. Molasses was exported to the America, while also made into a boiled concentrate that is fermented & then distilled into white rum, notably by New London, Connecticut distillery in 1660 & continues to be produced by Bacardi in South America near antique sugar cane production farms owned by the distillery.
When the British cut off molasses supplies during early tension with colonists, the colonists turned to cereal grains & mash extracts of starches & sugars thereof to make whiskey which went on to become the patriotic American drink of choice. Grain grew so well in America that farms needed a way to preserve & market a grain extract & a common piece of farm equipment was a copper pot still, that enabled the farmers to take excess grain & convert it to mash, fermented & then distilled into whiskey spirits that were easier to transport than large bushels of grain & there was a ready profitable market for whiskey sales that was rapidly expanding with bars & saloons established widely during the expansion to the west.
Even George Washington promoted the practice of private distillation. He was passionate to encourage a DIY spirit in colonists to do things for themselves, independent self-motivated pragmatic action philosophy of a maverick spirit to improve life in any way they could think of. George Washington was producing rye whiskey in a pot still setup at Mt. Vernon. During his final year alive, Washington used 5 pot stills to produce 11,000 gallons of whiskey. Now some 200 years later micro-distilling picking up in popularity with entrepreneurs & hobbyists setting up copper pot still apparatuses in their home garages, sheds & workshops to make DIY spirits!
The temperance movement got started after the war of independence, when many Americans became alcoholics, spending a lot of their time morning, noon & night getting drunk. This inhibited economic growth & development & came to be widely seen as a scourge, moral decay & lives of hedonistic self-worship, constant intoxication, laziness & wayward ways of living low life lifestyles.
On Oct 28th, 1919 Prohibition against the manufacture, sale or transportation of liquors started with congressional passing of the Volstead Act, causing a radical shift in the spirits industry, the formation of crime syndicates & organize mafias & other criminal social networks to move spirits as illicit black market goods with higher value-added prices due to the risks associated with getting caught, arrested, having your goods & vehicle impounded & confiscated & forfeited, causing some unlucky spirit runner to go bankrupt. Moonshining had always been around as a way to avoid alcohol taxation, so naturally an explosion in moonshine production happened in response.
The failed prohibition ended up costing the then US government more than $500 million in lost excise tax revenue annually, while almost nearly wiping out the American Bourbon industry, which started with a farmer distillers form rebellion uprising in 1792 when the US Federal government decided to leavy taxes on all distilled spirits. Many packed up & headed to the frontier, to modern day Kentucky, to present day Bourbon County, where modern Bourbon Whiskey industry was formed, back then away from east coast government agents.
The land in Kentucky was idea for growing corn, the grain used to make bourbon whiskey. The limestone rich hard water in this region also idea for Bourbon production because it lacks iron & iron ruins bourbon production. The Jim Beam distillery in Clermont Kentucky survived & today a titan of Whiskey production, started back when Jacob Beam in 1795 started distilling whiskey in Hardin Creek Kentucky.
Today the Beam distillery has the capacity to produce 10 million gallons of Whiskey annually. Corn, rye & barley grains are inspected, quality control tested, then crushed into a grist, mixed with water in the sour mash process. Similar to authentic sourdough bread production, a small amount of the previously used mash collected & added to the new mash, helping to critically control the PH, which when acidic, reduces pathogenic bacterial growth. In Jack Daniels process, sugar maple wood burned to make charcoal.
The produced grain mash fermented distilled alcohol allowed to slowly drip through a giant wood vat filled with the charcoal for a smoother taste filtering effect from the activated high surface area carbon in the charcoal. Then in both cases, the resulting mother liquor added to 52-gallon fire charred American white oak barrels made at a local cooperage operation, for extended aging in a warehouse racking system that create a distinctive flavor & taste change over a period of months or in some ultra-premium cases years.
The alligator skin char inside the barrel interacts with the whiskey as the barrel heats & cools, expanding & shrinking where the Bourbon Whiskey enters & exists the charred wood repeatedly, providing some 160 wood chemicals that dissolve, 6 of which taste like vanilla, along with a number of different wood sugars & other smell & flavor molecules that change the mouth feel, smell, flavor & taste of the resulting Bourbon Whiskey. This makes the location & climate & weather & architecture of the barrel house important to the production quality & authenticity.
At Jim Beam, some of these 9-story tall barrel storage buildings hold more than 20,000 barrels. After aging for 2 years, each barrel has distinctive colors & flavors, so a master distiller mixes the contents of many barrels to produce a uniform quality liquor with consistency associated with the brand. To be called straight bourbon in America, the liquor must made in the USA, contain 51% corn & be stored in new charred oak barrels for a minimum of 2 years. These spent barrels after 1 cycle are then sold to distilleries in Scotland, where these use bourbon barrels are used to produce vanilla & sugar flavors in scotch whiskey, which only uses 100% barley. The monks from Ireland brought distilling technology to Scottland, something most Scottish people would deny if asked about it.
Peak fueled fires are burned in big buildings where 6 tons of sprouted barley grain are smoked at that Laphroaig distillery in Scottland; a peaty smoky flavored Scotch whiskey formed thereby. Peat sort of like early coal, made of decaying plant matter, once dried it can be burned like coal. While most pot stills in Scottland are heated by steam, direct coal heating also used. The resulting single scotch whiskey then ages in the 2nd use charred oak barrels for 12, 15, 20, 30 or even 40 years. This lends flavor & taste from the local environment, the local air & the angels share (the cask losing 2% of the ethanol per year in storage), in exchange for imparting specific tastes & flavors that give Scottish Single Malt whiskeys get their signature properties. Scotch the second largest export from Scottland!
The proof of alcohol was originally tested by mixing the whiskey with gunpowder & if the resulting mix flashed when ignited, the alcohol was proved. Modern proof ratings are 2X the ABV or absolute percentage ethanol by volume, by comparison. This means an 80-proof spirit about 40% ABV. Agave cactus plant fermentation distilled spirit production forms Taquila. In Jalisco, Mexico, the national pride the slow growing blue agave grows, taking up to 12 years to mature. More than 400 species of agave grow wild in parts of Mexico, but only blue agave used to make Taquila, because of the distinctive flavor known by the Mesoamerican & Aztecs indigenous peoples to make a fermented drink used at religious ceremonies. When the Spaniards explorer arrived in the 1600's, they took this agave pulp fermenting technique & applied spirit distillation technology to first produce Taquila.
Gin production centers around juniper berry infusions into the alcohol, other botanicals create the different kinds of gin. In the Middle Ages it was believed that Gin. could cure the bubonic plague. In the 1600's English soldiers encountered Gin. for the first time in Holland, where it was known as "Dutch Courage" & dispensed in small quantities to soldiers before they went into battles. During the 1700 Gin. became the addictive drug of abuse for the English underclass. London distillers produced enough gin for every person in England to have 14 gallons per year. Many botanicals like bitter orange peel & lemon peel & angelica root & seed & coriander & licorice are added to the pot still with neutral grain spirits made from corn, barley & rye. Allowed to steep in the alcohol for 24 hours as Beefeaters distillery, the mix then distilled into a spirit that gives up different flavors from the botanicals into the distillate throughout the distilling day, resulting in a rainbow of flavors that gives each Gin. producer a gin with process & flavor botanical specific tastes & flavors, dry London Gin in the case of Beefeaters signature product. In the United States Vodka from Russia & Poland, distilled there as far back as the 1400's, sells 3X better than Gin.
In Vodka production, the idea to produce the cleanest possible spirit without tastes or flavors by repeated distillation to remove any contaminates. The output spirit from vodka production in its high proof high concentration for can be used as an octane booster in gasoline fueled vehicles, though nearly all Vodka diluted with water back down to 40% abv before bottling. The culture of James bond films & an increasingly affluent general public in the 1950's & 1960's helped highly mixable Vodka to become the preferred spirit of most Americans & the bestselling spirit thereby.
A future primitive focus at modern distilleries attempts to continue blending, brewing, distilling & flavoring processes from the 1800's using the best of 2000's era computer controlled or automatic continual production technologies with quality analysis & quality control, tasting panel judges & bewildering marketing efforts to sell ethanol in water mixtures for as much money as possible. Ultimately, you the consumer are the judge, to drink or not, what to buy, how you choose to live & what kind of lifestyle you want to make a reality for yourself.
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